Hope at the heart of Pope
Francis’ World Day of Peace Messages
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| Pope Francis lights a candle at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan (Vatican Media) |
The first day of the new year, 1 January 2020, is the Feast
of Mary, Mother of God. It is also the 53rd World Day of Peace: an opportunity
to review Pope Francis’ messages for this annual celebration, from 2014 to
2020.
By Vatican News
If there is one common theme running through all of Pope
Francis’ World Day of Peace messages, it is Christian hope.
While addressing the challenges facing the modern world, and
offering concrete solutions to the same, the Pope’s messages always end up
focusing on the face of Jesus, as the source of our hope and inspiration for
peaceful coexistence.
2014: Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace
Pope Francis’ first World Day of Peace message was published
in 2014. He addresses it “to everyone, individuals and peoples, wishing them “a
life filled with joy and hope”.
The keyword of his message is “fraternity”, which the Pope
calls “an essential human quality, for we are relational beings”. Without
fraternity, he continues, “it is impossible to build a just society and a solid
and lasting peace”.
“The family is the wellspring of all fraternity”, writes
Pope Francis. “It is the foundation and the first pathway to peace, since, by
its vocation, it is meant to spread its love to the world around it”.
The Pope describes how modern communications make us
“powerfully aware of the unity and common destiny of nations”. He speaks of our
“vocation to form a community composed of brothers and sisters who accept and
care for one another”, but notes how “this vocation is still frequently denied
and ignored in a world marked by a ‘globalization of indifference’”.
“The basis of fraternity is found in God’s fatherhood”,
writes Pope Francis. “In God’s family, where all are sons and daughters of the
same Father, there are no ‘disposable lives’. Fraternity, he concludes,
“generates social peace because it creates a balance between freedom and
justice, between personal responsibility and solidarity, between the good of
individuals and the common good”.
2015: No Longer Slaves, but Brothers and Sisters
In his message for the 2015 World Day of Peace, Pope Francis
dwells on “the scourge of man’s exploitation by man”, that destroys fraternity
and the common good.
Under a heading entitled “The many faces of slavery”, the
Pope decries how “millions of people today are deprived of freedom and are
forced to live in conditions akin to slavery”, despite the international
community adopting numerous agreements to the contrary.
Pope Francis reflects on the different categories of people
affected by modern slavery: laborers, migrants, “persons forced into
prostitution or sold for arranged marriages”, trafficked women and men, or
those recruited as soldiers, “minors and adults alike”.
The Pope analyses some of the causes of slavery, concluding
that “today, as in the past, slavery is rooted in a notion of the human person
which allows him or her to be treated as an object. Whenever sin corrupts the
human heart and distances us from our Creator and our neighbours, the latter
are no longer regarded as beings of equal dignity, as brothers or sisters
sharing a common humanity… They are treated as means to an end”.
Finally, Pope Francis appeals to all men and women of good
will, “not to become accomplices to this evil”. Instead, he concludes, “may we
have the courage to touch the suffering flesh of Christ, revealed in the
faces of those countless persons whom he calls ‘the least of these my
brethren’”.
2016: Overcome Indifference and Win Peace
Pope Francis' message for the 2016 World Day of Peace is an
invitation to overcome various forms of indifference. Recognizing the conflicts
and crises that constitute a “real third world war fought piecemeal”, the Pope
invites everyone “not to lose hope in our human ability to conquer evil and to
combat resignation and indifference”.
The Pope identifies different kinds of indifference,
starting with that towards God, “which then leads to indifference to one’s
neighbor and to the environment”. Indifference and lack of commitment, he
continues, “constitute a grave dereliction of the duty whereby each of us must
work in accordance with our abilities and our role in society for the promotion
of the common good and in particular for peace, which is one of humanity’s most
precious goods”.
As an antidote to indifference, Pope Francis proposes
building a culture of solidarity, mercy and compassion. This requires a “conversion
of hearts”, he adds. “The grace of God has to turn our hearts of stone into
hearts of flesh, open to others in authentic solidarity”. Peace, writes the
Pope, is the fruit of such a culture.
2016 was also the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. In the
spirit of that year, Pope Francis concludes with an invitation “to realize how
indifference can manifest itself in our lives and to work concretely to improve
the world around us, beginning with our families, neighbors and places of
employment”.
2017: Nonviolence: a Style of Politics for Peace
The Pope’s message for the 50th World Day of
Peace in 2017, focuses on making “active nonviolence our way of life”. “When
victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become
the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking”, he writes.
Pope Francis examines difference cases of “piecemeal”
violence in the world, and the great suffering they cause. “Violence is not the
cure for our broken world”, he concludes. Instead, the Pope offers the
examples of Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr Martin
Luther King.
Jesus Himself offers a “manual” for this strategy of
peacemaking in the Sermon on the Mount, continues Pope Francis. “The eight
Beatitudes provide a portrait of the person we could describe as blessed, good
and authentic. Blessed are the meek, Jesus tells us, the merciful and the
peacemakers, those who are pure in heart, and those who hunger and thirst for
justice”.
“Active nonviolence is a way of showing that unity is truly
more powerful and more fruitful than conflict”, concludes the Pope. “May we
dedicate ourselves prayerfully and actively to banishing violence from our
hearts, words and deeds, to becoming nonviolent people, and to building
nonviolent communities that care for our common home”.
2018: Migrants and Refugees: Men and Women in Search of
Peace
Pope Francis dedicates his 2018 World Day of Peace Message
to all those who “are willing to risk their lives on a journey that is long and
perilous, to endure hardships and sufferings”, in order to find “somewhere to
live in peace”.
“In a spirit of compassion”, the Pope asks us to “embrace
all those fleeing from war and hunger, or forced by discrimination,
persecution, poverty and environmental degradation to leave their homelands”.
Pope Francis suggests a strategy combining four actions we
can offer “asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and victims of human trafficking,
in order to give them an opportunity to find the peace they seek”. These
actions are: “welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating”.
“Welcoming” means “expanding legal pathways for entry” and
“balancing our concerns about national security with concern for fundamental
human rights”.
“Protecting” has to do with “our duty to recognize and
defend” the dignity of those seeking asylum and security, and “to prevent their
being exploited”.
“Promoting” entails “supporting the integral human
development of migrants and refugees”, enabling them “to cultivate and realize
their potential”.
“Integrating”, concludes Pope Francis, means “allowing
refugees and migrants to participate fully in the life of the society that
welcomes them, as part of a process of mutual enrichment and fruitful
cooperation”.
2019: Good Politics is at the Service of Peace
Pope Francis’ message for the 2019 World Day of Peace opens
with a challenge to those who hold “political office and political
responsibility”: “If exercised with basic respect for the life, freedom and
dignity of persons, political life can indeed become an outstanding form of
charity”, he writes.
Good politics “respects and promotes fundamental human
rights, which are at the same time mutual obligations, enabling a bond of trust
and gratitude to be forged between present and future generations”.
Pope Francis balances these political virtues by listing
their corresponding vices. These include, among others, corruption,
justification of power, “xenophobia, racism and the plundering of natural
resources”. All of them, writes the Pope, “undermine the ideal of an authentic
democracy, bring disgrace to public life and threaten social harmony”.
Peace, confirms Pope Francis, “is the fruit of a great
political project grounded in the mutual responsibility and interdependence of
human beings. But it is also a challenge that demands to be taken up ever anew.
It entails a conversion of heart and soul”.
This conversion is both interior and communal, concludes the
Pope. It has three inseparable aspects: peace with oneself, peace with others,
and peace with all creation, “rediscovering the grandeur of God’s gift and our
individual and shared responsibility as inhabitants of this world, citizens and
builders of the future”.
2020: Peace as a Journey of Hope: Dialogue,
Reconciliation and Ecological Conversion
“Hope” is again at the heart of Pope Francis latest World
Day of Peace message, which opens with the statement: “Peace is a great and
precious value, the object of our hope and the aspiration of the entire human
family”. Hope, writes the Pope, is “the virtue that inspires us and keeps us
moving forward, even when obstacles seem insurmountable”.
Pope Francis acknowledges how “the terrible trials of
internal and international conflicts, often aggravated by ruthless acts of
violence, have an enduring effect on the body and soul of humanity”. “Mistrust
and fear weaken relationships and increase the risk of violence, creating a
vicious circle that can never lead to a relationship of peace”.
On the other hand, writes Pope Francis, “Peace emerges from
the depths of the human heart and political will must always be renewed, so
that new ways can be found to reconcile and unite individuals and communities”.
That journey of reconciliation “calls for patience and trust”, says the Pope.
“Peace will not be obtained unless it is hoped for”.
The world does not need empty words, continues Pope Francis,
“but convinced witnesses, peacemakers who are open to a dialogue that rejects
exclusion or manipulation”. Peace is a process that requires enduring
commitment, he adds. “It is a patient effort to seek truth and justice, to
honor the memory of victims and to open the way, step by step, to a shared hope
stronger than the desire for vengeance”.
Finally, Pope Francis refers to the recent Synod on the
Pan-Amazon Region. “Faced with the consequences of our hostility towards
others, our lack of respect for our common home or our abusive exploitation of
natural resources, we are in need of an ecological conversion”, he writes, one
that will “lead us to a new way of looking at life”.
The Pope concludes with a renewed call “for a peaceful
relationship between communities and the land, between present and past,
between experience…and hope”.
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